Meringue Birch Twigs – Gluten-Free

May 12, 2015

When I received The Baking Bible fresh from the book seller, the pages opened to Meringue Birch Twigs. I lusted over the picture. They looked so easy and simple. Such a breeze so beautiful. Not. They were a challenge the whole way through. The meringue was easy, but piping the batter into clean straight lines was tough. After they dried, they wouldn’t release from the Silpat and almost all of them broke. ???

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Ingredients

Volume Grams Ounces

Instructions

MAKING THE MERINGUE

This went simply enough. The egg whites whipped nicely. See how to whip meringue successfully.

I had so many choices of flavourings: orange, lemon, lime, maple, coconut, cinnamon, anise, but in the end I chose tangerine. I liked the idea of a soft gentle orange flavour with the crispy meringue.

PIPE THE MERINGUE TWIGS

I felt very optimistic when I started. How difficult could this be, so I readied my tip and the bag

Meringue in the bag, I set about piping the twigs from top to bottom, but I couldn’t get a nice, even stick. I was shaking side to side, and I couldn’t develop constant tension from top to bottom. So I changed the position of bag. Didn’t work any better.
Now I tucked my elbows into my body and went side to side. My body seemed to understand this motion. Now I got straight and even twigs.
Rather than using a brush to tamp down the ends, I just wet my fingertips and smoothed out the ends. This worked well.

Piped twigs before I tapped down the ends and before they were baked.

BAKE THE MERINGUE TWIGS

They baked without incident, but I thought better to release the twigs from the Silpat before I drizzled them. I worried they would be double stuck, and would break.
As it turns out, the twigs wouldn’t release from the Silpat. So strange because NOTHING sticks to Silpat. I tried every way I could think of to release them cleanly, but every which way I tried, they broke. They stuck to the Silpat! Huh?

Baked meringues stuck to the Silpat and broke.

DRIZZLE THE MERINGUE TWIGS WITH MELTED CHOCOLATE

Melting the chocolate was okay.

Releasing them again with the chocolate dried to the Silpat broke them even more. So I gave up.

Drizzled chocolate over the Meringue Birch Twigs

WHAT ARE THE ALPHA BAKERS? : Here’s how it works: once a week, for the next two years, 25 Alpha Bakers commit to baking their way through every recipe of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s newly published The The Baking Bible.. Each week we post our experiences on our blog sites: our successes, our failures, our like and dislikes . The recipes are scheduled in advance so that everyone will be baking the same recipe at the same time. Unfortunately, no recipes can be shared in my Alpha Bakers posts due to publishing restrictions, but if you love to bake,The Baking Bible. is a must-have book. You can see other tutorials for the same recipe at the following link The Baking Bible Alpha Bakers at http://rosesalphabakers.blogspot.ca/.